I’m neither pleased, nor displeased with the results of my first hypermiling attempt. I know there are more improvements I can implement to further increase my overall mileage and I will continue to research and implement them, but for now I’m just going to have to live with the extra 2.5mpg I got. My average mpg on a tank of gas before this one was usually 17-18mpg, on this tank I got 20.01mpg. Not quite what I was hoping for – only a 13% increase.

You may be wondering why I’m not more excited about these results? I really did set my expectations pretty high. I figured that if I could coast for at least 1 mile of my 12 mile commute that it would make a huge difference. I have lots of opportunities to coast along my route and was usually pretty good at taking advantage of them. I honestly was hoping for 25mpg. A point of clarification I feel I need to make – when I refer to “coasting” I mean take the car out of drive and put it in neutral. I usually only try to do this when I know I’m coming up to a stop, since putting the transmission back in gear while at driving speeds seems to produce a healthy “clunk” when re-engaging the gears.

I’m still “perfecting” my coasting abilities so I still expect to see an improvement going forward. For example, one thing I found to be consistent was if I had my windows rolled down, even just as little as 2 inches, I wouldn’t coast as well. Also, I need to start my coasting earlier to get the maximum advantage of the kinetic energy. I *know* that 25mpg is achievable.

I’m not sure if it’s going to help or hinder my progress, but I’m going to be starting a new job at the end of the month that will increase my commute, put me in more traffic, pretty much keep me off of the highways, and also take me over a large hill (I think they are called Encino Hills?). It may help though because once I get over the hill I can coast for up to three miles one way, and about a mile and a half in the other. I’m sure it will be a wash but it will also depend on how I ascend up those hills. As always, I’ll post the ongoing results.